Blogging about my father
Two weeks ago, on the anniversary of my father's death, I finally decided to get moving on a project I'd been putting off for over two years: getting the blog about my father operational again. Something had gone wrong when I did a Movable Type upgrade, and I had been avoiding dealing with it.
As it turned out, there was a fairly simple fix, so I got the blog working again. And I've been posting there every couple of days.
In theory, the blog was meant to be for anyone who knew Peter to post anecdotes and descriptions and discussions and thoughts and memories. In practice, I went through a period of posting, then my Uncle Dobe went through a period of posting, then the blog lay dormant for two years, and now I'm doing most of the posting again.
One reason I started the blog in the first place was to share memories and stories with people who didn't know Peter—but without making people who weren't interested read those stories in my main blog.
But at some point it occurred to me that few if any of my friends were reading the posts, and that I was kind of sad about that.
So: it would make me happy if y'all (or at least those who know me) would stop by the blog about my father and take a look. You don't have to stay long, you don't have to read all 40 entries so far, you don't have to comment, you don't have to keep coming back to it later; it may turn out that the stuff I'm posting is of interest only to family, if them. But if you'd be willing to drop by and look around and read a couple of entries, I'd appreciate it; a lot of my original impetus for creating the blog was to have a way to share stories about Peter with the world in general.
And he was quite a character; lots of interesting stuff about him. Also, he was often funny.
I'll be posting anecdotes, bits of mail he sent, math proofs, jokes, commentary, etc. For example, today's entry is a copy of the letter that he wrote to the authorities in response to receiving a parking ticket, in which he first pled for clemency and then offered edits to the phrasing of the ticket itself.
If you don't want to just wander through the archives, here are a few other entries you could start with:
- The first entry, discussing the blog.
- A story about the devil.
- Peter teaching me about matrix encryption.
- Dobe musing about Peter and books, and my followup discussing the fate of Peter's books.
- Languages spoken in the home.
- Part 1 of Peter's neat words list. (I'll post parts 2 through 4 soon.)
Anyway, my main point is that sharing stuff about his life makes me feel better, and so it would be helpful to me if friends would stop by and look around.
